NVIDIA Ion

Acer’s NVIDIA Ion toting Aspire Revo nettop is getting a much-needed processor bump, with the company swapping out the breathless single-core Atom 230 CPU for its dual-core Atom 330 counterpart. The compact nettop also gets more memory and bigger hard-drives, the former doubling to 4GB and the latter offering either 320GB or 500GB.

What the world needs now, sang Viewsonic, is Ion, sweet Ion, and so they gave us this. The Viewsonic VOT 130/132 nettop may look like a pale VHS cassette but it's actually one of the items in the company's new product range, accompanied by two other compact desktops, two netbooks and a PMP. Of the lot, though, it's the VOT 130/132 that's most interesting, having as it does optional NVIDIA Ion graphics.

No, not an NVIDIA Ion space-invader dive bombing a lurid netbook, but one of Point of View's new Mobii ION 230 machines. Based on Intel's Atom 230 processor, a curious choice considering the single-core 230 is more usually a nettop CPU, the Mobii attempts to redeem itself by using NVIDIA's Ion GPU along with the typical 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard-drive.

In a deeply frustrating move, Acer have released a new version of their Atom-based nettop, addressing one of the key issues we had with the first-gen AspireRevo but then scuppering it in another way. The Acer Veriton N260G switches the original AspireRevo's mediocre 1.6GHz Atom 230 or 330 processor for a far more welcome 1.66GHz Atom N280, but simultaneously drops the NVIDIA Ion GPU we so admired.

Intel have reportedly punished Samsung and Lenovo by canceling their preferential Atom chip pricing, after the two companies broke Intel’s netbook restrictions. According to industry sources, Samsung are planning an Atom N-series netbook which uses NVIDIA’s Ion graphics chipset and an 11.6-inch display – likely the Samsung N510 – for release later in this month; that goes against Intel’s limits on screen size, which the company (along with Microsoft) limit to 10.2-inches or below.

Eagle-eyed nettop watchers will note that we've already seen EMTEC's G-Box quite a few times here on SlashGear, albeit wearing different branding. Based on Pegatron's reference design, EMTEC say the the G-Box uses NVIDIA's Ion graphics chipset, which would suggest it's a version of the Cape 7, but the VGA rather than HDMI port is more like the lower-powered Ultra Slim.

Notebooks using NVIDIA’s Ion graphics chipset may still be in short-supply, but that hasn’t stopped the company from developing its replacement. Ion 2 is, according to Fudzilla, expected to launch toward the end of 2009, with a shrunken die, far faster graphics and many more shaders.

Samsung are preparing to launch a new, 11.6-inch netbook, the N510, and rather than Intel's Atom Z5xx series of processors they've picked the 1.66GHz N280. The N510 will also use NVIDIA's Ion graphics chipset, paired with 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard-drive.

SlashGear stopped by the Pepcom Digital Experience in New York this week, and caught up with one of the more interesting netbooks on the horizon: Lenovo's S12. While it may physically resemble one of the company's previous models, albeit with a larger 12.1-inch display, what makes the S12 really special is the NVIDIA Ion chipset inside. The demonstration - which you can see after the cut - showed silky-smooth simultaneous HD encoding and playback.

ASRock have announced a new ultraportable, the Multibook G22, and while from the outside this might look like a standard netbook its specs make it something more unusual. Not only does the 12.1-inch 1366 x 768 G22 have an integrated DVD Supermulti drive, but it uses Intel’s dual-core Atom 330 processor paired with NVIDIA’s Ion graphics chipset.

NVIDIA's Ion brand could be seen in a lot more places from now on, as the graphics company has apparently approved manufacturers wishing to use the name on non-netbook systems. Ion was initially used to describe an Intel Atom processor paired with NVIDIA's MCP79 GPU, the same chip as the GeForce 9400M.

We’ve had a busy week here at SlashGear, with news from two shows – games-expo E3 and Computex – together with the arrival of the Palm Pre. The latter may have just a few days in the spotlight before Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, where we’re expecting to see a new iPhone unveiled, so get yourself up to speed with our Palm Pre review in advance of our WWDC live-blog at 10am PT tomorrow.